Donald Trump’s Anti-Establishment Politicking is a Sham

Well, Mike Baker tried to explain Huawei to me. And one of the things that he, Mike Baker from the CIA, one of the things that he was explaining, he said, you have to realize that there is no such thing as industry independent of government in China. If you have something like Huawei, if you have a giant corporation, they are inexorably connected to the Chinese government. And the moves they make are not necessarily designed for, you know, the infinite growth paradigm. This idea that we have in the United States with corporations are beholden the stockholders who are just trying to make money. That's not what they're doing over there. They have a long game. And the long game involves information, involves espionage, involves stealing trade secrets and patents from other companies. And so when they're selling them these modems, they've got built-in third-party options. So the third party, meaning China, can extract information. So if someone has this modem and they're using this modem to send information to someone in Beirut, China can also get that information. Yeah. They do a lot of cyber. I mean, that's been a thing that's been known for a long time, that they'll, you know, jack patents and intellectual property and they have this whole, you know, economy that's kind of thriving off technology that's made elsewhere. That's certainly an issue. But also, I would argue that it's probably the case with the U.S. too, that the distinction between corporations and the state is largely a veneer because you have such control of our political process because of big money from corporations flowing into the system. So I think that a lot of these decisions that are made even when it comes to foreign policy are directly in relation to how it will impact those corporations. Like, the thing that I remember was a lightbulb moment for me back in the day when I first learned about it was the banana wars. Have you ever heard about this? No. Back in the day, I think it was in the late 1800s, and you can tell me on that, we just went into South America and started toppling governments because we wanted to jack their bananas. And it was literally for the, I think, the Chiquita Banana Company that we did that. Really? Yeah. So when you look at that, you go, okay, well, that kind of distinction between corporation and government is not even really a thing here. It's like this veneer that's in between the two, but really, it's the powerful moneyed interests and the elites that kind of run everything and they're married at the hip, whether they're in the government or whether they're in corporations. I think this was the late 1890s. Again, I'm more than happy to be fact-checked on this, but I remember the first time I read about this, it had to be in college, the banana wars. I was like, that's insane. Tell people for bananas. It's crazy. Well, how about when you go throughout history and you find out that a lot of the wars were over salt? I didn't even know that. Oh, my God. They killed people for salt. It was very important back in the day because they didn't have refrigerators. So in order to preserve things and keep them from being infected by bacteria, they would pour salt all over their meat and salt all over their fish, and that's how they preserve things. Right. You could apparently preserve things for long periods of times when you completely cover them with salt. Yeah. So I guess it's just always been a thing that it's like wars over resources. Yes. Now there's a lot about oil, but like... We're accustomed to the oil stuff. Yeah. You're right. We have been used to that for quite a while. And it's interesting because what just happened with Syria and Trump, that was fascinating, is at first he said, oh, we're getting out of Syria, we're getting out of northern Syria. Everybody went crazy and said, oh, my God, what about the Kurds? And then we come to find out like three or four days later that he's like, well, no, we're actually taking these troops from northern Syria, moving them over into western Iraq, and they're going to be doing the same thing that they've been doing from western Iraq. And then Trump had the nerve to go out there and say, and we've secured the oil. It's so tremendous. We've secured the oil. We're not going to make the same mistake like we made in Iraq again. And this is something that he had been saying at CPAC at the Conservative Political Action Conference going back for years. Every year he'd give a speech. And he actually said, like, we should have taken the oil. We should have taken the oil in Iraq because we didn't want ISIS to have it and we should have it instead of ISIS. And it's like he actually rips the mask off of everything we're doing because he has no filter. And it's like, yeah, that was a big part of it. But what he's just admitting in front of the world is international law means nothing. We don't care about the proper process. We don't care about – like, imagine for a second China did that to us. They're like, no big deal or anything, but we're just going to go into Texas and we're just going to jack all your oil. But don't worry because it's okay. We're allowed to do that because we say we're allowed to do that. We're like, what are you talking about? But we're going to do that to a sovereign country, Syria, as we pretend like we care so deeply about civilian – or Syrian civilians, and that's why we're there to protect them. Like, no, we're there to jack their oil. That's what we're trying to do and control the region. It's so disturbing when it's that transparent. Exactly. But that's – see, that's – it's interesting. But is it better? Well, that's what I was just about to say next, but some people make the argument that, well, at least there is no tap-dancing bullshit, whereas with all the other presidents, they have this – this, like, fake holier-than-thou attitude where they really can, like, put a happy face on a disgusting thing like empire, where Trump is – and I think it's fair to say – he's, like, too stupid to really go through the tap dance. And so people are like, hey, there it is. It's like it's right in front of our face. But what's interesting about him is he says both things at the same time. Like, he has the political instincts enough to know that people think war is generally bad. So he always goes out there and he talks about how he thinks war is generally bad, and we got to get our troops out of the Middle East. I don't know why we're there. It's so stupid to do in the first place. But when you look at what he's actually doing, it doesn't match his rhetoric. So I don't know if you remember this, but, like, a year or so ago, he tweeted, we're getting out of Afghanistan finally after all these years. We've been there for 18 years. It was terrible. We should have never been there in the first place. And then we just didn't get out. He said that, acting like we were going to do it. And then the generals behind the scenes were like, ha ha, that's a good one. And we never got out. And then he just stopped talking about it. We're still there. But he just says it. He's like, oh, we're going to get out of Iraq. Then he doesn't do it. So what happens is he gets – it's actually – politically, it comes across sometimes as a positive because nobody follows up with it, and the media doesn't do their job and say, wait, we didn't actually get out of there. So it comes across as a positive politically because he's still doing the head fakes towards nonintervention with people who agree with, but it's business as usual behind the scenes. How much time do you think he actually spends on any of these things? And if he does spend time, how does he have the time to do these interviews? How does he have the time to tweet? How does he have the time to watch Fox News? I mean, I really want to know how much interaction he actually has with his cabinet. How much interaction does he actually have with the generals? How much interaction? That's the dirty little secret, Joe, is that – It can't be much. It's not because what he really does is he watches Fox News all day and tweets out their videos, and he tweets all day. Well, yeah, right. How can he be doing that and also doing what we think you should do? Look, I don't have any time, and all I do is do podcasts. That's right. So I watch him and I'm like, this doesn't make any fucking sense. No. So here's the thing. And there was a story that was reported before he became president. I think it was after he got the Republican nomination. There was this interesting story that – it wasn't discussed too much, but I thought it was fascinating because the Trump team apparently approached John Kasich, who was just kind of a standard establishment Republican. He was the governor of maybe Ohio, but I'm not sure. He was one of those states over there. But anyway – It was Ohio. So he approached John Kasich and basically said to him behind the scenes, hey, listen, man, if I end up winning this election, I want you to kind of be my vice president, run the day-to-day at the White House, take care, dot all the I's, cross all the T's, do all the work like that, and I want to go around the country and keep doing rallies and rile up everybody and get everybody to our side. So basically – and this shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. What's that? Well, even if you win, why do you have to rile everybody up? Well, see, he's the first president to never stop campaigning. He's always campaigning. He's always doing rallies. And there's a reason why he's doing that, Joe. It's the only thing he loves on this earth. It's that and watching Fox News that he loves. So that's what he does with all of his time. And everything else, yes. See, this is the thing, Joe. He took all these deeply establishment figures, Steve Mnuchin of Goldman Sachs, Stephen – I'm forgetting his name – Cohen, something, Cohen, Cohen, another guy from Goldman Sachs. He had all these just career insiders, brought them into his administration, whether it's with the economy or with foreign policy, John Bolton, deep neoconservative. He said he believed in the opposite philosophy, but then he put John Bolton in power because he wants the system to keep running as it is and run smoothly while he goes around and just makes the name for himself and talks about how amazing and tremendous this country is and what an amazing job we're doing. So it's funny because he has two different personas. One of them is I'm going to pretend to be the anti-establishment guy and rally people up nonstop and be a politician and be good at it. And then the other thing is behind the scenes, he's like, guys, just keep everything running and hold it together with duct tape if you have to before I get out of here. So he's – at the same time, he's acting like the most anti-establishment president of all time when he's on the campaign trail. He's also the most deeply pro-establishment candidate in terms of – or president in terms of what he's actually doing. So it's a fascinating dynamic that's going on right now. It's a giant hustle. That's right. It's a giant hustle. And listen, man, and other people on the left might disagree with me on this, but I think he's fucking brilliant at it. I think he's brilliant at this part of it, where he really does have a way – like, he broke every single political rule that ever existed when he ran for president. And he won. So what does that tell you? 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